Slashdot Mirror
UK Gov't Launches 'Your Freedom' Website To Seek Laws Worth Repealing
Firefalcon writes "The UK Government launched Thursday the 'Your Freedom' website, headed by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, to 'identify laws that should be repealed.' In a recent tweet, Police State UK pointed out an article in the New Statesman which appeals for people to call on the Government to repeal the ill thought-out Digital Economy Act that was rushed through Parliament without sufficient scrutiny. While part of the Act is regarding the digital TV switchover, other sections allow for users to be restricted or disconnected from the Internet at the behest of copyright owners, which goes against the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' that has been in place since the Magna Carta."
Damm, that rocks. Can we have some?
Shooter licensing and gun registration, imposing penalties for refusing to divulge passwords, default penalties for people who refuse drug and alcohol testing all go against the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' that has been in place since the Magna Carta.
This should be coupled with a law that states there can only be a thousand laws (not including this law) on the books at any one time.
That means that if they want to add a new law, they would have to get rid of an old one to make space. This would keep the number of laws from getting ridiculous, as well as discourage legislators from passing laws simply to look like they're doing something. Though I suppose they could be cunning and have one of the laws always be a disposable one which would be the one replaced by the new useless law which would then become the disposable one.
Hm. There's gotta be a way to discourage politicians from making new laws. Perhaps just keep it simple and make the price of introducing a new law a finger or thumb. No mp could introduce more than 10 laws, and they might be reluctant to introduce even one.
Loose lips lose spit.
Great idea, in theory. I foresee abuse, trolling, duplicate posts and spammers making it an unintelligible and useless database for public opinion, but maybe it will at least highlight a few laws to be looked at and refined. I don't personally believe these sort of ventures stand much ground without some serious work being dedicated to dig out the gems of relevance within the tides of pure crap. The interent is a powerful tool, but having access to unlimited and unmediated information is not always the best thing possible when you need specific ideas. Then again, i've always been a 'pessimist'. We'll see how this works out, i hope it really makes a difference.
I am writing this from within the maximum security wing of the New British National Defence Forces detention island.
I was absolutely delighted to share all of my views about laws I felt needed repealing in the UK. My IP address was in no way used to trace my identity and when my new friends from the NBNDF came to talk to me I felt I was completely fulfilled by their probing and vigorous questions.
I have not been added to any lists of registered subversives.
My stay at the security wing has been fulfilling. I feel refreshed, invigorated and entirely supportive of the NBNDF. No electro-pain equipment was used upon me at all during this week.
Signed,
Mr Bottles.
Plus a new law that states all new laws must have a sunset (five years max) and must be voted into renewal each sunset.
(save for actual amendments)
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
This is what can happen in the rest of the civilised world if you vote for the third party.
when i saw that when cameron moved into number 10, he only had a simple bed, 1-2 ikea brand stools and whatnot. i said to myself, well, someone who is living that simple has to have some good qualities at least.
...
immediately thereafter he apologized to irish for the bloody sunday. then, he come up proposing that queen's funds should be frozen. (11 mil or so a year). now, his partner clegg comes up with this.
it is sorry time for elite bloodsuckers in britain
Read radical news here
Dumb laws on the books means potential lawsuits (if it's possible) over such laws.
And it is indeed possible Stop and search laws were successfully challenged in the European court.
By the way, does the UK has jury nullification?
Yes, and no. Jury nullification isn't actually an explicit legal right as such in the UK or the US. It's a de facto power. The Jury has a duty to make a judgement on the law and the facts of the case. The thing is they don't need to give a reason and if they don't there's absolutely nothing that can be done.
So yes, the Jury may pass a judgement of not guilty because the law is stupid. On the other hand, they can also pass a judgement of guilty because of the result of a coin toss.
wow lots of legalize cannabis posts. We need something like that here in the states. That would help alot of issues I think.
g0t b33r?
Let's be clear on this: the majority just love their tyranny. For the small minded (you don't have to look far to find them) it's just so much fun to think up things that other people shouldn't be allowed to do.
A Freedom/Repeal bill is great in principle, but it'll never happen in practice. Quite apart from the problem that any repeals will pilloried as Soft On Something, the coalition have very different ideas on what the little people should be free to do: Cons tend to be pro freedom to smoke tobacco and anti freedom to smoke cannabis, and the Dems are t'other way around, for example.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Although it's possible they may review it, the bill won't be scrapped. Before the election, I emailed my local Conservative MP (Nick Soames) about the Digital Economy Bill. Here's the response:
Thank you for your email of the 8th April about the Digital Economy Act. I share your concern about this piece of legislation and I want to make clear the approach that my Party has taken.
As you will be aware the Bill received Royal Assent yesterday.
Britain has been made to wait too long for legislation updating the regulatory environment for the digital and creative industries. I regret that once the Government got around to considering these issues, it did not allocate sufficient time in the House of Commons for proper legislative scrutiny. It says a great deal about the Government's support for the creative industries that despite considering many of these issues as far back as 2006 they only just brought this piece of legislation forward.
My Party took the decision to seek to remove those clauses of the Digital Economy Bill that we did not support or feel received proper legislative scrutiny, while supporting the Bill as a whole. Rejecting the Bill would have been an unacceptable set-back for the important measures it contains.
We supported the Bill's efforts to tackle online copyright infringement. This is an extremely serious issue that costs the creative industries hundreds of millions of pounds each year. We want to make sure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual property framework in the world for innovators, digital content creators and high tech businesses.
The measures in the Bill aimed at tackling online copyright infringement received robust scrutiny in the House of Lords. My Party was concerned about the lack of Parliamentary oversight of the original clauses and as such the Act now has a super-affirmative resolution in it. This means Parliament will debate any order that the Secretary of State lays that would allow people to be disconnected. These measures can also not be introduced for 12 months [ie 12 months after it became law]. This means that we are by no means rushing in to these decisions and that the next Parliament will be able to consider them beforehand.
The measures in the Act designed to tackle illegal peer to peer file sharing set up a proportionate regime that would, only following public consultation, repeated warnings and due process, lead to people having their internet connection temporarily suspended. It will not, as many have suggested, lead to people being disconnected without an appeal. Even if people are disconnected they will be able to sign up to another ISP immediately without penalty.
While I have no doubt that these measures could have been improved if the Government had allocated time for this Bill to be debated in Committee, blocking these measures in their entirety would have risked hundreds of thousands of jobs in the TV, film, music and sports industries and was therefore not something we were willing to do.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact me.
Yours sincerely,
Nicholas Soames
Fun fact: Nick Soames is Winston Churchill's grandson.
OK, sure. Now are you going to the job they did or are you "too proud" and will just keep claiming benefits instead?
Summation 2
Take off the pink colored glasses, will you, it was only good if you were rich, white, straight and male.
Race, gender and sexual orientation equality were not important issues back then. If we were to return to this '19th century libertarianism', we would have all the good parts as well as all of our modern equality. As for being rich, no economic system in the world has solved that particular problem.
They are repealing the games industry tax relief, it was announced in the budget.
Top of my list would be drug laws, mainly because they don't work, and end up criminalising a very large proportion of the populace. There are an estimated one million _regular_ cocaine users in the country. There are over 3 million regular cannabis users. I'd personally guess that over half the population have at some point tried something illegal. The most idiotic of recent laws is the one outlawing mephedrone (which despite the newspaper hysteria has not been verifiably linked to any deaths yet), because it also outlaws many other drugs that have not ever been used by anyone. Basically, what I do in my own free time, as long as I don't inconvenience anyone else, should be for me to decide. If I decide to take something that might kill me, that is my decision - I don't need the government nannying me. The government currently is outlawing drugs for people's protection supposedly, and then locking up those same people.... if the goal is to protect people from the harmful effects, the solution is not to lock them up at the taxpayer's expense. Up to 4 billion pounds could be raised in revenue if drugs that are currently being used were taxed.
In no particular order, some others may be :
DRM circumvention illegality, as mentioned elseware.
Public disorder offences - I'm not against them per se, but recent laws are incredibly vague and make loads of things illegal.
Drunk and disorderly - Either enforce it or get rid of it... there are millions of drunk disorderly people on the streets every weekend.
All laws allowing detention without charge... 28 days is too long, which brings me on to...
All anti-terror laws. They are all shit and worthless (as far as I was aware, blowing people up was arleady illegal prior to anti-terror legislation), and infringe upon everone's rights. Glorifying terrorism is now an offense, which we seem to have been for ages when the terrorists are on our side (ANC, French Resistance, etc).
Some child protection laws - Two policewomen were recently found to be breaking the law by looking after each other's children, without being registered.
Some "eco" laws such as the illegality of incandescent light bulbs
Laws censoring the internet (currently being overseen by a non-governmental unnaccountable body, the Internet Watch Foundation) - They don't work, get over it.
Laws requiring people to reveal passwords to encrypted devices, which criminalise people who have forgotten their password
Some sex offences which require people to be put on the sex offenders register and not be allowed to work with children for the rest of their lives, like peeing against a lamppost, or somone on their 16th birthday having sex with someone a day younger than them.
Distribution of child pornography laws that apply to yourself - a 17 year old girl who sends a picture of her tits to her boyfriend is guilty of this.
Incitement to racial/religious hatred laws. I'm an atheist who really hates some religions, and tries to convince others to hate them too, ergo I am a criminal.
What depresses me is that I could go on - these are just some of the more important ones IMO. The last Labour government introduced almost 5000 new laws, so I am not convinced knocking off one or two will actually make a difference. Fortunately for us they have outlawed setting off a nuclear device, so we can all rest easy now... or perhaps that may have been covered by existing laws. Better safe than sorry, I guess.
Congratulations, you've attacked me with an ad hominem while completely bypassing my main point. So let me reiterate it for you:
Race, gender and sexual orientation equality were not the cultural norm in the 19th century. They are in the 21st century. So if we were to go back to the 19th century way of government, we would not have to take back the inequality found in 19th century life. We can have the best of both worlds.
With all due respect, you're talking out of your arse.
If you think Clegg could've gotten a better deal out of the Conservatives despite being by far the smaller coalition partner and having a Labour party not really serious about coalition talks, you're in dreamland. Clegg got the best possible deal he could squeeze out of the Tories, and given that or another immediate general election, I'll take that. The Lib Dems still stand for what they did before, but they were realistic enough to know that in a coalition, they couldn't get everything. They did get a referendum on AV, which is a massive concession considering we've NEVER in our history had a change to our antiquated voting system. But, the Tories presumably wouldn't budge an inch on bullshit like the Digital Economy Act. To get movement on that, The People need to make it very clear how much they hate it... to the Tories. They're the problem here really.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Basically, my belief is that anyone who wants to own a gun should not be able to have one.
Basically, my belief is that anyone who wants to tell others how to live should not be able to vote.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
The Magna Carta is a horribly outdated document and some of the terms are laughable. It's why it's only used as a guideline, not as a cast iron constitution. Here's some questionable rules it puts across:
If you're a noble, your heir cannot be of someone of lower social class.
If you're a widow, you can't re-marry without permission from the crown.
Rules regarding debt (specifically) to Jews.
Nobility can only be punished by their equals
Women cannot accuse anyone of murder unless the victim was their husband
Lots of rulings regarding specific barons alive at the time and new forests that had been created that are utterly irrelevant now.
They are actually very much revocable: they were revoked within a decade and had to be forced into being reinstated.